High Hopes
£4.26
Undemanding warmth - Hopkins has produced again with High Hopes a book that is undemanding to read, yet a book that makes you content when you read it. His warmth shines through in his writing. Anyone who has been brought up in the North West will recognise many of the character types, even if they are several generations removed from them. The only trouble is that Billy is just a bit annoying to be a truly sympathetic character - as another reviewer has noted, he has a solution for everything, and it all falls into place for him. Life isn t like that, especially for someone who is headstrong and gullible as Billy is. The other annoying thing about the book is the lack of any character development for key characters such as his brothers, and, in fact, his fiancée. His supposed best friends are mere ciphers for his own thoughts, and are absent from his life for large parts of the book. By contrast, the narratives involving his mother and his father generate real emotion in the reader, particularly the scene where Mam and Dad are doing their best not to let Billy down when he brings his girl home for the first time. Worth reading, and it is in fact a favourite of mine, but it could have been better. A flawed favourite, perhaps.
A tale full of charm... - High Hopes is the follow up to the highly claimed first novel, Our Kid (fact/fiction), written by the retired teacher Billy Hopkins. Having survived the war an 18 year old Billy and his mates take to London to teacher training college, the bright lights and all that their rationing books will allow. This book tells their story, including Billy s first year at school and his courtship of his future wife Laura Mackenzie. Written like a grandad telling his grandkids the story in front of a blazing fire this book is full of charm, old style values, old style humour and it is written with a warmth that today s society sadly lacks. Refreshing, a fast read and as I said, a tale full of charm.
Our Kid grows up and is still entertaining - I read this book in three sittings and found it a moving and sometimes hilarious read. Billy encaptures all that is human in us all, the survivor, the one who makes mistakes and bounces back. it is true life with all the ups and downs that go with it and is one of the best books I ve read in ages.
self-indulgent parody - Billy Hopkin s first book - Our Kid - was a wonderfully written and funny story about a kid who survives despite everything that life throws at him. Therefore I eagerly picked up the sequel - High Hopes. Unfortunately, high hopes are all I had for it as the book turns out to be very disappointing. This is supposed to be a fictional autobiography - can there ever be such a thing? I cannot quite put my finger on what went wrong. It may be that Billy is such an irritating goody two shoes and everything goes right for him. It may be that there really is no story in this - his supposed class of unteachable pupils are won over within an afternoon. It may be that the sentences he uses are so short - don t know why this annoys me but it does. Perhaps the worst things are the parodies. The Irish sound like proper micks. The Scots too speak the way Americans think they speak. Even Billy s mam talks in a way that is laughable. People only speak like this in the worst possible situation comedies.In its favour, the book provides an idea of life in the 1940 s. Times were hard but communities got through them. Re-read Our Kid Mr. Hopkins and produce something like that again.
A fantastic follow-up to Our Kid - Having read Our Kid in the space of 2 days, I was delighted to find High Hopes on the shelf of my local book store (sorry amazon!). This a great sequel to the wonderfully detailed images of billy s childhood in Our Kid. The author has a flair for creating such vivid images of the time and captures the naivety of the old-fashioned courtship. Having lived in Manchester for 9 years I know the districts he writes about, and it is so interesting to see how these places have obviously changed from the days of Billys young life. I can t wait for the next installment from the author!